The Chemical Oceanography of the Bras D'or Lakes
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PROC. N.S. INST. SCI. (2002) Volume 42, Part 1, pp. 37-64. THE CHEMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY OF The Bras d’Or Lakes PETER M. STRAIN1 and PHILIP A. Yeats Marine Environmental Sciences Division Department of Fisheries and Oceans Bedford Institute of Oceanography Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, B2Y 4A2 Considerable research has been done on the Bras d’Or Lakes since the 1960s. Many of these studies have either focussed on chemical conditions in the Lakes, or have included chemical measurements in support of other research. Substances studied include major ions, inorganic nutrients, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, heavy metals and organic contaminants. What is known about the chemistry of the Lakes is reviewed and some model results are presented that combine what is known about the water circulation and external inputs of chemicals to estimate some parameters of biological productivity and to predict chemical distributions where data are currently unavailable. Overall, the low nutrient inputs to the Lakes can only support a relatively low level of natural biological productivity, and the contribution of sewage and other man-made sources of nutrients is very small. However, localized build-ups of both natural and anthropogenic nutrients have affected the water quality of some microenvironments in the Lakes, resulting in the eutrophication of sites like the west end of Whycocomagh Bay and some of the barachois ponds around the Lakes. Although the available data on contaminants are limited, there is no indication that any persistent organic or heavy metal contaminants are a concern within the Lakes. The environmental quality is in general very good. This status is a result of the small population density and the very limited industrial development around the Lakes. Maintaining or improving this status will require good management of current and future activities in the Bras d’Or Lakes and their watershed. Depuis les années 1960, des recherches considérables ont été effectuées au sujet du lac Bras d’Or. Un bon nombre de ces recherches étaient axées sur les conditions chimiques dans le lac ou comportaient des mesures chimiques à l’appui d’autres études. Les substances étudiées comprenaient les principaux ions, les éléments nutritifs inorganiques, l’oxygène dissous, la chlorophylle, les métaux lourds et les contaminants organiques. On examine ici les connaissances dont on dispose au sujet des conditions chimiques du lac et on présente les résultats de certaines modélisations qui combinent nos connaissances sur la circulation de l’eau et les apports allochtones de produits chimiques dans le but d’estimer certains paramètres de la productivité biologique et de prédire la distribution des substances chimiques dans les cas où on ne dispose pas actuellement de données à ce sujet. De façon générale, le faible apport d’éléments nutritifs dans le lac ne peut alimenter qu’une production biologique relativement faible et la contribution des eaux usées et autres sources d’éléments nutritifs d’origine anthropique est minime. Toutefois, des foyers d’accumulation d’éléments nutritifs naturels et anthropiques ont influé sur la qualité de l’eau de certains micro-environnements du lac, ce qui a abouti à l’eutrophication d’endroits comme la partie ouest de la baie Whycocomagh et de quelques- uns des étangs-barachois alentour du lac. Quoique les données sur les contaminants soient limitées, rien ne révèle la présence dans le lac d’une contamination persistante par les matières organiques ou les métaux lourds qui donnerait matière à inquiétudes. La qualité du milieu est en général très bonne. Cela est dû à la faible densité de population et au développement industriel très limité alentour du lac. Le maintien ou l’amélioration de cette situation nécessitera une bonne gestion des activités actuelles et futures dans le lac Bas d’Or et dans son bassin hydrographique. Introduction The Bras d’Or Lakes (Fig 1) are a group of interconnected saltwater basins located in Cape Breton Island at the north-eastern end of Nova Scotia. They cover a total area of 1080 km2, and have an average depth of ~30 m. There are a wide variety of physical environments in the Lakes. Some areas are shallow and flat-bottomed (e.g. Denys 1 Author to whom correspondence should be addressed 38 STRAIN and YEATS Fig 1 The Bras d’Or Lakes. Basin, mean depth ~5 m); others are steep-sided and deep (e.g. St. Andrew’s Channel, whose depths reach ~280 m). Small ponds that are partially or completely isolated from the Lakes by sand and gravel barriers are found along the shorelines. Locally, they are known as barachois ponds. There are 3 connections between the Lakes and the North Atlantic. There is significant exchange only through the Great Bras d’Or Channel, a long (~30 km), narrow (~1 km) channel that connects the Lakes to Sydney Bight, on the Nova Scotia side of Cabot Strait. The Great Bras d’Or Channel has an average depth of ~20 m and a maximum depth of ~95 m. A shallow (~12 m) sill near its mouth further restricts water movement into and out of the Lakes. There is negligible flow through the second permanently open connection to the Atlantic, the Little Bras d’Or Channel, which is located at the north-east end of St. Andrew’s Channel. The third connection to the Atlantic is through a seasonally operated lock at the south-eastern end of St. Peter’s Inlet that connects the Lakes to Chedabucto Bay on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. The complex geometry of the basins and embayments makes it necessary to con- sider processes that determine chemical distributions and behaviour on a number of different spatial scales. Chemical inputs and processes, and water circulation, mixing, and residence times are very different for some small bays and basins in the Lakes than they are for the Lakes as a whole. Within the Lakes, the different basins range in size from barachois ponds that are a few hectares in area and a few meters deep with volumes of 104m3 to St. Andrew’s Channel which has an area of approximately 13,000 hectares, depths up to 280 m, and a volume of 8.5x109m3. Freshwater flows, which provide one pathway for the transport of both natural and contaminant chemicals into the Lakes, are also variable. The North Basin is about 6 times larger in area, and more CHEMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY 39 than 20 times larger in volume, than the west half of Whycocomagh Bay, but the freshwater inputs into the 2 basins are approximately the same. Flushing time es- timates vary from about one week in the Great Bras d’Or Channel to 40 weeks for the deep water of St. Andrew’s Channel to 96 weeks for the deep water in the west end of Whycocomagh Bay (Gurbutt et al., 1993). The intensity of vertical mixing in different areas of the Lakes also varies over a wide range (Gurbutt and Petrie, 1995). It is important to understand the inputs of chemicals and their subsequent fates in coastal waters for a number of reasons. Inputs of nutrients may control the primary productivity of the Lakes’ ecosystem, and the resulting growth and decay of organic matter will in turn determine the concentrations of dissolved oxygen that are available to support other marine life. Wastes from sewage, agriculture, aquaculture and other man-made sources add to these nutrient inputs and have the potential to alter both the natural concentrations and the ecosystem dynamics that depend on them. Enrichment of aquatic environments with dissolved nutrients is known as eutrophication. Other contaminants, such as heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants, also have the potential to affect the health of marine organisms and/or their suitability as food. This article will review and discuss what is known about the chemistry of the Lakes, in terms of the inputs, distributions and dynamics of chemicals both in the Lakes as a whole and in the basins and embayments that make up the Lakes. It will also compare the chemical conditions in the Lakes to other marine environments in the region and use models of circulation and chemical behaviour to predict concentrations and transports. Chemical Studies in the Bras d’Or Lakes. Sporadic interest in the Bras d’Or Lakes from the 1960s to the 1980s generated a number of studies of contaminants and the chemical oceanography of the Lakes. Young et al. (1959) measured the major ion concentrations in water, and concluded that the composition resulted from simple mixing between freshwater and coastal seawater, a conclusion supported by carbonate system and stable isotope measurements made by Mucci and Pagé (1987). Smith and Rushton (1964) measured dissolved oxygen levels in a number of the barachois ponds around the Lakes. Geen (1965) and Geen and Hargrave (1966) studied the primary and secondary production at a few sites, and made some measurements of nutrients, plant pigments and dissolved oxygen in support of this research. A large study of the suitability of the Lakes for aquaculture in 1972-73, summarized in Young (1976), included chemical measurements of heavy metals, nutrients, plant pigments and dissolved oxygen in molluscs, water and sediment samples from the Lakes and water and sediments from the influent rivers. Arseneau et al. (1977) measured a number of chemical parameters in surface waters in East Bay and the barachois pond at the northeastern end of East Bay, and dissolved oxygen profiles at one location in East Bay and several in St. Andrew’s Channel. However, the technology Arseneau et al. were using was not well suited to making these measurements in salt water. Wright (1976) measured nutrients and plant pigments at a few locations from 1973 until 1975.